The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception

Jericho, where they remain for some time — presumably while James convalesces.⁶

For Eisenman, this attack on James is pivotal. He notes the parallels between it and the attack on Stephen as recounted in Acts. He suggests that Stephen may be an invented figure, to disguise the fact that the attack — as Acts could not possibly have admitted — was really directed at James. And he points out that Jericho, where James flees for refuge, is only a few miles from Qumran. What is more, he argues, the flight to Jericho has a ring of historical truth to it. It is the kind of incidental detail that is unlikely to have been fabricated and interpolated, because it serves no particular purpose. As for the ‘enemy’, there would seem to be little doubt about his identity. The ‘Recognitions of Clement’ concludes:

Then after three days one of the brethren came to us from Gamaliel… bringing us secret tidings that the enemy had received a commission from Caiaphas, the chief priest, that he should arrest all who believed in Jesus, and should go to Damascus with his letters…⁷

The surviving editions of Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews contain only one reference to James, which may or may not be later interpolation. The chronicle reports that the Sanhedrin, the religious high court, call before them James, ‘the brother of Jesus who was called Christ’.⁸ Accused (most improbably) of breaking the Law, James and certain of his companions are found guilty and accordingly stoned to death. Whether this account is accurate, doctored or wholly invented, the most important aspect of it is the date to which it refers. Josephus indicates that the events he has described occurred during an interval between Roman procurators in Judaea. The incumbent procurator had just died. His successor, Lucceius Albinus, was still en route to Palestine from Rome. During the interregnum, effective power in Jerusalem was wielded by the high priest, an unpopular man named Ananas. This allows the account of James’s death to be dated at around ad 62 — only four years before the outbreak of the revolt in ad 66. Here, then, is at least some chronological evidence that James’s death may have had something to do with the war that ravaged the Holy Land between ad 66 and 73. For further information, however, one must turn to later Church historians.

Perhaps the major source is Eusebius, 4th-century Bishop of Caesarea (the Roman capital of Judaea) and author of one of the most important early Church histories. In accordance with the conventions of the time, Eusebius quotes at length from earlier writers, many of whose works have not survived. In speaking of James, he cites Clement, Bishop of Alexandria (c. ad 150-215). Clement refers to James, we are told, as ‘the Righteous’, or, as it is often translated, ‘the Just’ — ‘Zaddik’ in Hebrew.⁹ This, of course, is the by now familiar Qumranic usage, whence derives the ‘Teacher of Righteousness’, the leader of the Qumran community. According to Clement, Eusebius reports, James was thrown from a parapet of the Temple, then beaten to death with a club.¹⁰

Later in his chronicle, Eusebius quotes extensively from a 2nd-century Church historian, Hegesippus. All of Hegesippus’ works were reputedly extant as late as the 16th or 17th century. Everything has since disappeared, though copies may well exist in the Vatican, as well as in the library of one or another monastery — in Spain, for example.¹¹ At present, however, almost everything we have by Hegesippus is contained in the excerpts from his work cited by Eusebius.

Quoting Hegesippus, Eusebius states that James ‘the Righteous’ ‘was holy from his birth’:

he drank no wine… ate no animal food; no razor came near his head; he did not smear himself with oil, and took no baths. He alone was permitted to enter the Holy Place [the Holy of Holies in the Temple], for his garments were not of wool but of linen [i.e. priestly robes]. He used to enter the Sanctuary alone, and was often found on his knees beseeching forgiveness for the people, so that his knees grew hard like a camel’s… Because of his unsurpassable righteousness, he was called the Righteous and… ‘Bulwark of the people’…¹²

At this point, it is worth interrupting the text to note certain intriguing details. James is said to wear linen, or priestly robes. This was the prerogative of those who served in the Temple and belonged to one of the priestly families, traditionally the Sadducean ‘aristocracy’ who, during the 1st century, came to an accommodation with Rome and the Herodian dynasty of Roman puppets. Again, Eisenman points out, Epiphanius, another Church historian, speaks of James wearing the mitre of the high priest.¹³ Then, too, only the high priest was allowed to enter the Holy of Holies, the inner sanctum and most sacred spot in the Temple. What, then, can James be doing there — and without eliciting any explanation or expression of surprise from Church historians, who seem to find nothing untoward or irregular in his activities? Did he, perhaps, by virtue of his birth, have some legitimate right to wear priestly apparel and enter the Holy of Holies? Or might he have been acting, as Eisenman suggests, in the capacity of a kind of ‘opposition high priest’ — a rebel who, defying the established priesthood’s accommodation with Rome, had taken upon himself the role they had betrayed?¹⁴ Certainly the established priesthood had no affection for James. According to Hegesippus, the ‘Scribes and Pharisees’ decide to do away with him, so that the people ‘will be frightened and not believe him’. They proclaim that ‘even the Righteous one has gone astray’,¹⁵ and invoke a quote from the Old Testament — in this case from the prophet Isaiah (Isa. 3:10) — to justify their actions. They note that Isaiah had prophesied the death of the ‘Righteous One’. In murdering James, therefore, they will simply be bringing Isaiah’s prophecy to fulfilment. But also, in using this quote from Isaiah, they are following a technique employed in both the Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament. Eisenman points out that, just as this quote is used in order to describe the death of James, so the Qumran community employs similar ‘Righteousness’ passages from the New Testament in order to describe the death of the ‘Teacher of Righteousness’.¹⁶ Eusebius goes on to describe the death of James in the following manner:

So they went up and threw down the Righteous one. They said to each other ‘let us stone James the Righteous’, and began to stone him, as in spite of his fall he was still alive… While they pelted him with stones… [a member of a particular priestly family] called out: ‘Stop! What are you doing…’ Then one of them, a fuller, took the club which he used to beat clothes, and brought it down on the head of the Righteous one. Such was his martyrdom… Immediately after this Vespasian began to besiege them.¹⁷

Vespasian, who became emperor in AD 69, commanded the Roman army that invaded Judaea to put down the revolt of ad 66. Here again, then, is a chronological connection between James’s death and the revolt. But Eusebius goes further. The connection for him is more than just chronological. The entire ‘siege of Jerusalem’, he says, meaning presumably the whole of the revolt in Judaea, was a direct consequence of James’s death — ‘for no other reason than the wicked crime of which he had been the victim’.¹⁸

To support this startling contention, Eusebius invokes Josephus. The passage of Josephus he quotes, although no longer to be found in any extant version of Josephus, was unquestionably what Josephus wrote, because Origen, one of the earliest and most prolific of the Church Fathers, quotes precisely the same passage. Referring to the revolt of AD 66 and the Roman invasion that followed, Josephus states that ‘these things happened to the Jews in requital for James the Righteous, who was a brother of Jesus known as Christ, for though he was the most righteous of men, the Jews put him to death’. ¹⁹

From these fragments pertaining to James, a scenario begins to take form. James, the acknowledged leader of the ‘early Church’ in Jerusalem, represents a faction of Jews who, like the Qumran community, are ‘zealous for the Law’. This faction is understandably hostile towards the Sadducee priesthood and the high priest Ananas (appointed by Herod²⁰), who have betrayed their nation and their religion by concluding an accord with the Roman administration and its Herodian puppet-kings. So intense is this hostility that James arrogates to himself the priestly functions which Ananas has compromised.²¹ Ananas’ supporters respond by contriving James’s death. Almost immediately thereafter, the whole of Judaea rises in revolt, and Ananas is himself one of the first casualties, assassinated as a pro-Roman collaborator. As the rebellion gains momentum, Rome is forced to react, and does so by dispatching an expeditionary force under Vespasian. The result is the war which witnesses the sack of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple in AD 68, and which does not end until the fall of Masada in AD 74.

The only uncertain element in this scenario is the nature and magnitude of the part played by James’s death. Did it merely coincide chronologically? Or was it, as Josephus and Eusebius assert, the primary causal factor? The